The Hanoi dairy- last page in 2007

Hej again. We are all safe back from our excursion to Ha Long Bay at the north east coast Vietnam. After an over 3 and a half hour breath taking bus drive through the Vietnamese countryside, we finally arrived in the city of Ha Long Bay where our guide; Wang, managed to take us to our boat. Ha Long is Vietnamese mass tourism pur, and group after group of visitors are stuffed onto the more than 400 cruiseships, like cattle to the slaughterhouse.Well, it was not so bad as it sounds; yet. The boats are all relatively small and not huge floating hotels for hundreds of passengers, on our boat we were about 24, and it was seen as one of the biggest. The boats are all made of wood and are still kind of cute and cosy. Our cabins were quite spacious and clean. Our room -03- was right underneath the dining and karaoke area so we were serenaded to sleep by Malaysian drunkards tunelessly singing heartfelt love songs and we were awoken by the pleasant sound of the resident boat rats gnawing away at the wooden walls. Ok we took off from the habor and sat course to the more than 1900 limestone islands or rock formations which is the attraction of Ha Long Bay, and which we were going to explore on this 2 days one night trip, were we had meals, a visit to the biggest cave in north Vietnam, kayaking and the joy of being in nature.

We went kayaking for about an hour in the sea around those limestone rocks. It took some of us a little while to get used to the paddle and I had water running down my arms and straight onto my lap at first, until Jorgen advised me to hold the paddle further out and then we were a sychronised rowing machine gliding away through the water!!!The food on board was really nice seafood/vietnamese cuisine and kitchen staff really impressed everybody with their creativity serving prawns in a boquet of freshly cut veggies. Look at!!

Now we will go out and celebrate new year.